This left Alys as the sole heir to her mother’s mercenary unit, as well as Kristen’s little-used title as Duchess of Augustine. Alys spent the next few years under the radar, raising her orphaned nephew, and allowing her father to run the mercenary unit (renamed "The Krushers") she inherited in all but name.

In 3067 Alys gave a speech to the Parliament of the Free Worlds League wherein she questioned the need for Resolution 288[3] and challenged Parliament to remove the resolution, which would remove the permanent status of the Captain-Generalcy and which would also have the immediate effect of removing Thomas Marik from power. While this would also severely curtail the power of House Marik in general, Alys put herself out in front of the growing resistance to Thomas' attempts to centralize power.

What emerged from her call was entitled the "Great Debate,"[3] which ultimately came to nothing as Parliament voted to keep the position of Captain-General permanent. While various members of the Houses ruling the Duchy of Andurien and Principality of Regulus had called Resolution 288 into question in the past, Alys was the first member of House Marik to do so, and her actions established her as a potential player within the murky world of politics within the Free Worlds League.[3]

Alys Rousset-Marik at Age of 34 in 3075

Alys unwittingly played into the Word of Blake’s hands by raising this issue, as it served to keep the League fractured. This made it easier prey when they turned their Jihad to the League in 3068. For her part, Alys called upon the Free Worlds League Military to unite behind Thomas, even after the Blakists exposed "Thomas" as an impostor.[1] After the coup launched by Paul Marik that placed his daughter Corinne Marik on the throne in August 3069[4] and the gas attack against the Parliament on Atreus,[1] in 3070[5] Alys finally took over The Krushers and turned their night-fighting expertise against the Blakists. Forming the core of Alys' resistance, The Krushers were a key unit that actually hired other mercenary units to fight alongside the resistance. She ran her resistance unit, sometimes known as the Free Worlds Resistance, from the shadows and removed herself from public view. With the Word of Blake now sending brain-washed suicide bombers, she was forced to take more security measures to protect herself.[1]

While Alys' resistance forces were mainly built around The Krushers, their successfully bloodying of the Blakist Twelfth Division in combat announced Alys' presence as another player on the Free Worlds political scene at the time, and by 3071 Alys and her forces were notionally a part of one of four major power blocs operating within the League, considered to be notionally supporting Thomas Halas - although unlike the Ducal leaders of Oriente and Tamarind, Alys hadn't declared open support for Thomas - facing off against the power blocs built around Corinne Marik's forces and those of Kirc Cameron-Jones of Regulus and the carefully neutral Duchy of Andurien. Paul responded by delivering an ultimatum to Corinne that placed Augustine under blockade, cutting Alys off from her homeworld.[4]

Alys attended the Arc-Royal summit in 3073 alongside Duke Reginald Brett-Marik - son of Therese Brett-Marik - and both of them survived the suicide bombing at the summit. After coming into contact with Devlin Stone Alys threw her support behind him and the Coalition, and urged Reginald to do the same.[4] Alys would subsequently devote increasing amounts of resources to building close relationship with Stone and his followers, most noticeably the new husband of her cousin Isis, Victor Steiner-Davion, and after a failed effort by Thomas Halas to rescue his wife and the remains of the Second Knights of the Inner Sphere from Atreus Alys became more insistent that Oriente throw its support behind Stone and the Coalition.[2]

Alys and her forces were the main focus of activity by both SAFE and ROM within the Free Worlds League from 3070 onwards, and with Augustine under blockade and hunters from the Word of Blake actively pursuing her she became adept at constantly moving, staying out of sight and avoiding staying too long in any one location. The Resistance operated along the same lines, conducting repairs and refits within refitted DropShips and never establishing fixed bases. Other elements from within the FWLM joined her forces, motivated by her opposition to the Blakists and a desire to see the Word of Blake removed from the Free Worlds.[2] In addition to defections from within the FWLM, the Resistance was also joined by a number of mercenary units, attracting primarily disaffected units formerly employed by the Marik Commonwealth. Alys demonstrated a considerable degree of largesse when it came to distributing new equipment and upgrades, an attitude that was credited with allowing units such as the Legion of the Rising Sun to rebuild after taking devastating losses at the hands of the Blakists.[6]

Some were critical of Alys' tactical abilities, as typified by a news article circulating on Oriente in April 3077 discussing the performance of Alys' Second Group during the liberation of Wasat. Openly critical of the heavy damage taken by the Home Guard and Seventh Pesht Regulars during the opening stages of the assault as a result of encountering stiffer defenses than anticipated and the resulting two-month mobile guerrilla warfare campaign conducted by the Second Group until the Third Group commanded by Khan Santin West was able to deploy in February to assist in the campaign. By that point, the Free Worlds League front had managed to secure two worlds and raid a third, while other fronts were more active, a sign of poor performance that critics blamed on Alys personally.[10] Whatever the critical opinion of Alys' performance at Wasat, she clearly learned from any mistakes that had been made by demonstrating a swift and effective response when the defenses encountered at Berenson proved to be tougher than expected.[11]

Rumours began to circulate in November 3077 that some form of accommodation between Captain-General Corinne Marik and the allied coalition was being negotiated, with an agent - believed to be Daniel Schulz, aide-de-camp to Alys - supposedly holding a number of meetings with representatives from the Captain-General to discuss options.[12] Atreus was liberated from forces from the allied coalition in mid-December 3077, and around the 19th of December Alys issued a statement clarifying what had happened. Alys stated that with Atreus free, Corinne Marik was attempting to attach supplemental conditions to an accord reached with the allied coalition, ignoring terms from the accord that included the surrender of Paul Marik and other high-level figures to stand trial for war crimes, and Corinne’s abdication from the post of Captain-General pending new parliamentary elections. Unwilling to hand over Paul Marik, Corinne had also refused to abdicate and allow arbitration by parliament, instead declaring that she would only step down in favour of her chosen successor: Alys Rousset-Marik. Alys claimed to have turned down Corinne’s demands, stating instead that the people of the Commonwealth would decide matters on Atreus and that she would be heir to no throne.[13]

Alys' political acumen allowed her to gather allies, forge political alliances and even negotiate for assistance from some of the Word of Blake’s allies during the Jihad, and proved to be her greatest strength; unfortunately, her abilities as a strategic commander were somewhat lacking compared to her political abilities. This, combined with faulty intelligence and poor planning slowed the efforts of Alys' resistance forces and diminished their contribution to Operation SCOUR, as did a number of setbacks on the battlefield. This often resulted in the resistance forces having little choice other than to conduct hit and run attacks which were less effective than those tactics used by other forces.[14]

During the assault on Terra Alys commanded a task force consisting of the Twelfth Atrean Dragoons, the Seventh Donegal Guards, the Com Guard Fifth Army and the mercenary unit known as the Devil's Brigade; her group was responsible for subduing the Blakist forces located in the Great Britain region of Terra, an area that included the headquarters at the Sandhurst Royal Military College; the Blakists used guerrilla tactics to resist her forces, drawing the fighting out across the Pennines and the mountains in Wales before finally being defeated.[15]

Despite the mutual non-aggression pact established between Alys and Corinne, in 3079 the First Free Worlds Guards were still maintaining a blockade that prevented Alys' return to Augustine, a blockade born out of the belief that in following Devlin Stone, Alys was betraying the League to foreign interests.[16] Corinne had evidently agreed with Alys at some point that the former Free Worlds League planets incorporated into the Word of Blake Protectorate would be allowed to choose who would govern them in the future, but Corinne was evidently unwilling or unable to enforce that agreement, at least initially. In defiance of whatever had been agreed the Home Guard were still in place on Stewart and the Gryphons on Kalidasa in August 3079. Alys contacted Corinne on the 10th of August 3079 and indicated in relatively blunt terms that the occupation of both worlds by the two regiments wouldn't be tolerated, even though Alys and her resistance forces had fought alongside the Home Guard and the Home Guard continued to regard Stewart as their homeworld. Spelling out that the Free Worlds League had forfeited the right to govern the worlds since allowing them to be occupied by the Blakists and that their fate shouldn't be dictated by whichever local force had the largest army, Alys served Corinne with an ultimatum to remove both regiments. She also indicated that she intended to return to Augustine, but would not subject herself to Corinne's rule.[17]

“

You agreed to this before; now I am holding you to that agreement. With force, if I must. Know that this will haunt me and my soldiers to the end of our days, but also know that I believe that this is the right thing to do. And trust me: I will win.

Unwilling to accept calls to attempt to take the position of Captain-General, Alys served as a negotiator between the various provincial states left after the League’s breakup and the Republic of the Sphere.[14] Alys was already noted as creating the potential for a merger between the Protectorate and the Duchy of Oriente as early as 3079, a merger made possible by the co-operation between StarCorps Industries, the Halas family and Alys that led to the design and manufacture of Kopisbattle armor.[18]

After the Jihad Alys enjoyed a reputation as a hero on those Free Worlds League worlds that had either bordered the Word of Blake Protectorate, had been subsumed into it, or which felt as if they had been neglected or abandoned by the League. The combination of Marik blood, heroism in battle and her forthright, unpresuming nature made her almost an idol, revered as if she were a mix of media star and saint. Her call to dissolve the League was popular even before the Jihad on many of the worlds which would become independent, giving her many supporters beyond the worlds she brought into the Republic of the Sphere.[19]

However popular Alys was on many League worlds, she was also in part responsible for the antagonistic attitude taken by the Marik Commonwealth towards the Republic of the Sphere; Alys' opposition to the existing conventions of the League and her refusal to take advantage of the positions made possible by her birth and status made Alys unpopular with many in the Marik Commonwealth.[19]

Alys was known to have at least two daughters, although her marital status is unclear. Her second daughter, Alycia, was born to Christopher Hampton in 3074, although Alycia's existence was kept a secret until 3076 and her whereabouts remained a mystery during the Jihad. Christopher Hampton is known to have been killed in late 3075 by a Blakist suicide bomber.[2]